FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 66:10-14

Psalm 66:1-9

Galatians 6:1-16

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Prayer of the Day: O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus, you are the city that shelters us, the mother who comforts us. With your Spirit accompany us on our life’s journey, that we may spread your peace in all the world, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.” Luke 10:3.

We in the United States live in a culture steeped in violence. The culture of bloodshed permeates our popular literature, entertainment networks, advertising and, increasingly these days, our politics. The attack on our Capital following the 2020 election was not, as some would have us believe, an anomalous bleep on the radar. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, an expression of our national character. Our national creed is well expressed by Wayne Robert LaPierre Jr., CEO and executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) who famously reminds us that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Not to be out done, Colorado Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert told an audience of conservative Christians that if only Jesus had had an AR-15, he could have prevented the Romans from executing him. Perhaps Boebert’s comment was only a lame attempt at humor. But that she felt comfortable making light of what to Christians is (or should be!) the central tenet of their faith to a Christian audience speaks volumes.

Into this increasingly violent culture, Jesus sends his disciples as lambs among wolves. That registers as lunacy to a people steeped in the myth of redemptive violence and the firm belief that, when push comes to shove, a violent response to evil is finally unavoidable. In the words of Kenny Rogers, “Sometimes you have to fight to be a man.” I was recently in a discussion with a fellow Christian who said to me, “those who beat their spears into plowshares wind up plowing the fields of those who keep their swords.” When I pointed out to him that his clever remark was actually mocking the words of the Prophet Isaiah, he was, to put it mildly, chagrined. This little interchange demonstrates once again that American Christians are typically more American than Christian. How else can you explain Christians supporting “the right to bear arms” while claiming to follow the one who tells his disciples to “put away the sword?”

Yet disciples are distinguished by the conviction, lived out by their Lord, namely, that it is better to die than to kill. It all comes down to this: there are evils in the world that seem to cry out for an immediate remedy and nothing is more immediate than a bullet. Our temptation is to address such evils with appeals to some noble end justifying violent means. There can be no clearer example of such self justifying violence than the war in Ukraine where unspeakable carnage continues to be fed by a seemingly endless supply of weapons from NATO countered by a Russian arsenal of nearly equal magnitude. Of course, both sides are armed with weapons that could plunge civilization into new dark age if and when one gets the upper hand and the other’s security seems genuinely threatened. This is the dead end to which Mr. LaPierre’s philosophy finally leads.

To be a disciple of Jesus is to refuse, along with our Lord, to get caught up in the cycle of retribution; to reject the notion that the use of violent force is inevitable; and to be prepared to suffer death rather than to inflict it. It is to be sent as a lamb into the midst of ravenous wolves. To be a disciple of Jesus is to recognize that the ends never justify the means because we cannot know what the ends will be and whether they are the ends toward which God is working. The ends cannot justify the means because unjust means will always infect the ends. We cannot control the ends to which our actions bring us, but we can control the means by which we act. To do that, we must sometimes resist the temptation to bypass the peaceful way of our Lord to achieve some noble end or avoid some unspeakable evil.

Here is a poem by Dudley Randall illustrating that, whether we put our lives on the line to confront evil with a potent witness of peace or whether we simply gather to pray for peace, violence is still able to reach us. No greater juxtaposition has ever been seen than that of the ongoing courageous and peaceful struggle for racial justice in our land and the violent and ruthless opposition to it.

Ballad of Birmingham

(On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)

“Mother dear, may I go downtown

Instead of out to play,

And march the streets of Birmingham

In a Freedom March today?”

“No, baby, no, you may not go,

For the dogs are fierce and wild,

And clubs and hoses, guns and jails

Aren’t good for a little child.”

“But, mother, I won’t be alone.

Other children will go with me,

And march the streets of Birmingham

To make our country free.”

“No, baby, no, you may not go,

For I fear those guns will fire.

But you may go to church instead

And sing in the children’s choir.”

She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,

And bathed rose petal sweet,

And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,

And white shoes on her feet.

The mother smiled to know her child

Was in the sacred place,

But that smile was the last smile

To come upon her face.

For when she heard the explosion,

Her eyes grew wet and wild.

She raced through the streets of Birmingham

Calling for her child.

She clawed through bits of glass and brick,

Then lifted out a shoe.

“O, here’s the shoe my baby wore,

But, baby, where are you?”

Source: Cities Burning (c. 1968 by Dudley Randall; pub. by Broadside Press, 1968). Dudley Randall (1914-2000) was an African-American poet and poetry publisher from Detroit, Michigan. He founded a pioneering publishing company called Broadside Press in 1965, which published many leading African-American writers. Randall’s poetry is characterized by simplicity and realism. Randall became interested in poetry at an early age. His interest stemmed from his father taking him to hear prominent African-American writers and artists speak, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Walter Francis White, James Weldon Johnson and others. Randall worked on the floor of a Ford Motor plant, as a postal clerk and served in the military during the Second World War. He earned a master’s degree in library science and served as a reference librarian at University of Detroit where he was also named the University’s Poet-in-Residence. You can find out more about Dudly Randall and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

It’s official. The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade returning to the states full authority to regulate medical termination of pregnancies without regard to a women’s needs or desires. As a practical matter, this means the issue is no longer a mere culture war talking point. The extent to which women are entitled to determine the medical treatment surrounding their pregnancies will be a hotly contested issue in several states. As has been the case from the get go, religion figures heavily into the debate. Volumes have been written and I am sure more will be forthcoming about all the implications of this development. However, I am confining this discussion to the question posed in the title of my article, namely, what the Bible really says about abortion. As a disciple of Jesus, I want to make sure that if the Bible is to be dragged into this debate, people understand what it does and does not say. As a lawyer who took an oath to uphold the Constitution (back in the days when that actually meant something), I want us to be clear about what the issues actually are so that we do not clutter the airwaves, internet and barber shop with a lot of fruitless, ignorant chatter. One can only hope. So here goes.  

In the strictest sense, the answer to the question posed is “nothing.” The Bible does not address abortion anywhere. The one place where the status of a fetus is discussed is Exodus 21:22. Here the law provides that, where a pregnant woman is injured in the course of a brawl such that she miscarries, the responsible party must pay a fine to the woman’s husband. The provision clearly does not treat the wrongfully caused miscarriage as a homicide. It is rather a civil offense against property, more specifically, the property of the woman’s husband. This verse does nothing to support either the proposition that a fetus is the equivalent of a mature human or the claim that a woman should have the right to control her own body. It has no useful ammunition for either army in the abortion culture war. Not surprisingly, both sides ignore it.  

Now some anti-abortion advocates cite passages like Psalm 139:13-18, Jeremiah 1:5 and Genesis 25:21-26 (Jacob and Esau wrestling in Rachel’s womb) and Luke 1:41-44 (John the Baptist leaping in Elizabeth’s womb) in support of their claim that human life begins at conception. All reputable biblical scholars agree that these texts are poetic expressions of God’s involvement with and destiny for the people involved. They are not addressing our Twenty-First Century culture war disputes about how or when a person comes into being or when a person becomes a sentient human creature. The Lord says to Jeremiah, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” The psalmist declares that his or her days “were formed for me when as yet there was none of them.” Yet if one insists on ignoring the biblical writers’ intent and taking these verses as addressing the moment when life begins, then one can only conclude that life begins before conception. As a matter of fact, the biblical authors did not even know about conception. The ancient view was that a person springs from the “seed” of one’s father. Females are simply incubators for their husband’s seed.[1] This understanding is exhibited by the author of the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews who states that the patriarch Levi was in the loins of his great grandfather Abraham. Hebrews 7:9-10. However valid the theological point made by the author, one must admit that his or her understanding of human biology is wanting. Nonetheless, if you insist on taking the Bible literally at this point, then we should be regulating penises rather than wombs.

So here is the bottom line. I don’t know when a psycho-spiritual being emerges from the human reproductive process. Neither do you, nor does anyone else for that matter. The Supreme Court was incapable of making that determination and said as much. Science cannot answer the question for us and, as we have seen, the Bible is silent on the matter. Your opinion that the emergence of sentient being occurs at conception, birth or some point in between or after is just that-an opinion. More precisely, it is a religious/philosophical opinion.[2] Of course, you are welcome to your opinion. But you cannot maintain that it is a biblical teaching to which all Christians are bound and you certainly are not entitled to have it enshrined in law on that basis. The truth is that when, if ever, in the process of reproduction a fetus is deemed a person is purely a legal determination. It is a decision we as citizens make based not on religion or metaphysics, but by weighing the rights and interests of women, the interests of society as a whole and our understanding of pre-natal fetal development gleaned from medical science. The Supreme Court balanced all of these interests in its 1973 decision, Row v. Wade,  and determined, rightly I think, that the right of women to privacy in this most personal of decisions predominates. You can argue that these interests should have been balanced in some other way. But you cannot argue either that the Bible or medical science supports the proposition that a “person” emerges at conception. As they say down south, “that dog won’t hunt.”

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[1] Thus, the same reasoning applies to Jacob and Esau as well as John the Baptist. The point made is that their origin lies in the mystery of God’s predestination. Yet, once again, if we take this text as a literal description of when a person comes into being, that point would have to be before conception takes place.

[2] I have an opinion on this matter as well. I choose not to share it in this article as it is no more germane than yours. Nevertheless, if you are interested, you can find it at this link.

THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21

Psalm 16

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Luke 9:51-62

Prayer of the Day: Sovereign God, ruler of all hearts, you call us to obey you, and you favor us with true freedom. Keep us faithful to the ways of your Son, that, leaving behind all that hinders us, we may steadfastly follow your paths, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

In the first section of today’s gospel, Jesus must restrain his disciples who would nuke Samaritan villages that will not receive him. He would have his disciples know that retribution is not consistent with the reign of God he proclaims. Jesus’ love and forgiveness extends even to those who reject him. We never find Jesus turning away anyone in need of his assistance. He does not ask any one of the five thousand people he fed with loaves and fishes to demonstrate genuine need or that they have made good faith efforts to find gainful employment. Jesus responds with compassion to agents of the Empire occupying his homeland and which ultimately crucified him. He welcomed invitations to dine with respected religious leaders as well as social outcasts. Jesus’ love is radically inclusive, embracing even those who nailed him to the cross.

When it comes to selecting his disciples, however, Jesus is careful and discriminating. He spent the whole night in prayer before selecting the Twelve. Luke 6:12-16. He made it clear to the admiring crowd following him that, if they would be his disciples, they would need to put the reign of God before everything else and be prepared to take up the cross on which he himself would soon die for its sake. Luke 9:23-25. In the second half of our gospel reading, Jesus turns away three people who desire to be his disciples. The first, who promises to follow Jesus wherever he might go, is warned that homelessness is part of the discipleship package. The second two learn that the reign of God takes precedence even over “family values.” All of this strikes one as rather severe and uncompromising.

Or perhaps not. If we understand that Jesus’ love extends to all people and, indeed, the whole cosmos, then his words to these would be followers do not amount to rejection. Nor are they a reflection on their characters. Jesus is simply suggesting to them that they are not yet ready to be his disciples. They are not ready to make the sacrifices required to proclaim in word and deed the good news of God’s reign or to begin living into that reign in the mist of a world hostile to it. It does not mean that they are excluded from that reign or from the love God has for all creation.

Perhaps one of the most destructive errors infecting the church over the centuries is our coupling of church with God’s promise of salvation. I have seen on any number of occasions and perhaps you have too the bumper sticker declaring “No salvation outside the church.” I grew up with that assumption in my home congregation. As a young man pursuing ministry, I believed that salvation consisted in being converted to Christianity and being thus included in the church. My job, then, was to “bring people to Christ.” Over the years, however, I have come to recognize the insidious effect this misconception has had on what was supposed to be “good news.” Instead of sharing an incredibly good word to a world hungry for God’s inclusive kindness, mercy and reconciliation, we found ourselves trying to scare people into an exclusive church with threats of God’s wrath. Missionary work was a zero sum game in which people were called upon to abandon altogether their faith, their families and the faith communities that had formed them to “get aboard” the good ship salvation. It was that or face eternal damnation. Of course, this outlook on the missionary endeavor fit all too comfortably with western racism, colonialism and ruthless imperial exploitation. Though there were and are missionaries that respect and value the cultures and religion of the people to whom they minister, too many of them shared the prejudice and contempt of their oppressors. That condescending attitude is amply reflected in the poem by  Anita Endrezze below.

The equation of church with salvation has been equally harmful to our ecclesiology. If salvation means conversion and church membership, then evangelism equates with church membership growth. A church that is not growing is not doing its job. That explains a great deal of the angst these days over the marked decline in membership among mainline and, increasingly, so-called “evangelical” churches as well. If we are not growing, it means we are not “connecting” with people. If we are not growing, it means we are no longer “relevant.” If we are not growing, it must be because we are doing something wrong. Hence, the frantic effort to attract young families with flashy Sunday School curriculum, exciting youth activities, couples’ clubs, singles groups, book clubs and novel worship innovations like “seekers worship” and “dinner church.” Please understand that I don’t believe there is anything wrong with any of these things in themselves. But when they are part of an effort to lure people into the church by appealing to their appitites for freebies, entertainment and cheap babysitting services, they betray Jesus’ call to make disciples.

That brings me to my final point. Nowhere does Jesus call us to make church members of all nations. He calls us instead to make disciples of all nations or, more accurately stated, from among all nations. Membership implies a degree of status that goes with being part of a group. As a member of this church, I have a right to have my kids baptized, confirmed and married here. When my time comes, I am entitled to be buried out of this church. All I need to do in return is contribute a few dollars every year and show up often enough not to be taken off the rolls for inactivity. It is all transactional. As much as we preachers like to rail against inactive members, we have only our own flawed theology and practice to blame. We have sold the church as a warm, friendly community that offers all manner of benefits while requiring next to nothing in return. Can we really blame the people we have lured into our midst on this pretext when they balk at having an offering plate shoved under their nose and a request for a pledge of financial support? Understandably, these folks feel like the victims of a classic “bait and switch.” By appealing to their consumer appitites, we have neither proclaimed to them the Good News about what Jesus has done for them nor have we challenged them to join with him in witnessing to that Good News to a world that desparately needs it.  

The church is not a life raft designed to rescue as many souls as possible from a sinking ship. The church is the first fruits of God’s design to save the ship. The church is to be “a demonstration plot” for the coming reign of God, as the late Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farm so aptly put it. To be chosen as Jesus’ disciple is not an election to privilege above and beyond the rest of humanity. It is election to a vocation of service to the world for which God sent the only begotten Son. The church, however imperfectly, testifies to what human community is supposed to look like and the end to which God is drawing all of creation. Its mission is not to expand its numbers, but to form people capable of living in communion of Trinitarian love.  

Properly understood, the gospel lesson for this week is incredibly good news. The burden of saving the world no longer rests upon our shoulders. We need no longer worry about children who seem to have no interest in the church or critics who malign the church or the seeming indifference of the dominant culture to the church’s ministry. The salvation of the world and of each individual is God’s responsibility and God’s work of salvation extends far beyond the borders of the church. As Jesus reminds us, those who are not against us are with us. Mark 9:40. Indeed, if we believe what Saint Paul tells us about “all things being held together” in Christ, then it should not surprise us to find Jesus reflected in the faith and life of Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and people other faith-or no faith-traditions.See Colossians 1:15-20.

I suspect that congregations changing their focus from growing membership to making disciples might lose some long time members who want only the privileges that come with belonging to a voluntary organization. I also suspect that such congregations will attract new people hungry for community grounded in thick spiritual practices and dedicated to witnessing in word and action to God’s coming reign of justice, reconciliation and peace. Whether that will be a net loss or gain in terms of numbers, I neither know nor care. The church from which the Good News of Jesus Christ spread to the entire Mediterranean world was small enough to meet in a single room. As the story of the loaves and fishes illustrate, God does not need much to work with in order to accomplish great things.  

Here is the poem by Anita Endrezze to which I referred above.

Indian Vices

By nature Indians are very lazy and sworn enemies of work.
They prefer to suffer hunger than to fatigue themselves
with agriculture. Therefore, they must be forced to do this by their
superiors. With six industrious Europeans one can do more
in one day than fifty Indians
—Joseph Och, Missionary in Sonora: Travel Reports
of Joseph Och, S.J., 1755-176

Mining: The Indian is naked, swinging

quarter to half hundredweight steel-edged crowbars.

He climbs beams with notches set step by step,

carrying ore in plaited baskets

on his shoulders.

They are given one half-bushel of maize per week.

This is their payment unless they have a family–

then they are given two half-bushels.

Two men using a wheelbarrow could haul out

more than can thirty lazy Indians

working an entire day.

Natural resources: They are naked, with only a loincloth.

Otherwise they would steal valuable ore.

Instead they laugh

when their hair is thick with dusted gold

so that they look like ugly yellow-haired creatures.

Their hair is long and they secrete fragments

of ore there, wrapping their hair up

like a turban. You can no more trust them

than you would a Turk.

Gold and silver ore varies.

Some is very heavy, pure

silver spiked, as it were,

with silver nails.

The completely black

very heavy ores

are considered the richest.

Processing: The Indian washes his hair

several times a day, sluicing water

over his long hair, letting the silver fall

into a bowl which he then strains,

keeping more silver.

Then again, the Indian must relieve himself

and he hides behind a bush,

thereby stealing more ore

in a most despicable way.

Some can be reduced by fire . . .

or be broken up

and placed into a clay oven

. . . with molten lead,

until . . . the lead has amalgamated

with the silver.

Pebbles and slag float on top

and are skinned off

with hoes and the lead heated

with a double fire

until it becomes light and frothy

like glass.

This froth is removed in heaps;

what remains is pure silver.

The waste product: When the Indian dies,

perhaps careless at work, he is wrapped in a horse blanket.

Thread from deer or plant fiber

is used to sew him up.

It is heathen, this practice

of putting bows and arrows,

small bowls, and other things

in the grave. Instead, I pull the bell rope

and they are pleased at the songs

and lighted tapers

on the altar of the whitewashed church.

They die when they want to,

saying they are only journeying

to the next village.

They have many vices

which I have discovered

and abolished, including the throwing

of patterned sticks,

which is like gambling.

They would rather lie on blankets

in the bushes, throwing these sticks

against the rough wool to muffle the sound,

than work in the fields

or in the mines which are very near,

nor do they think of tomorrow

and the profit that must be made,

whether it is gold, silver, maize,

or their heathenish souls.

Source: Throwing Fire at the Sun Water at the Moon, (c. 2000 by Anita Endrezze, pub. by University of Arizona Press). Anita Endrezze (b. 1952) is an American poet, writer and artist based in Washington State. She claims Yaqui ancestry from her father. The Yaqui are an Uto-Aztecan-speaking Indigenous people of Mexico in the valley of the Río Yaqui in the Mexican state of Sonora and the Southwestern United States. They also have communities in Chihuahua and Durango. Endrezze graduated with an master’s degree from Eastern Washington University. Her poems and stories have been translated into seven languages and published in ten countries. You can read more about Anita Endrezze and sample more of her poems at the Poetry Foundation website.

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 65:1-9

Psalm 22:19-28

Galatians 3:23-29

Luke 8:26-39

Prayer of the Day: O Lord God, we bring before you the cries of a sorrowing world. In your mercy set us free from the chains that bind us, and defend us from everything that is evil, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask,
   to be found by those who did not seek me.
I said, ‘Here I am, here I am’,
   to a nation that did not call on my name.
I held out my hands all day long
   to a rebellious people,
who walk in a way that is not good,
   following their own devices;
a people who provoke me
   to my face continually…” Isaiah 65:1-3.

The psalm for this Sunday begins with the cry of dereliction echoed by Jesus hanging on the cross: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?” Psalm 22:1. It is a cry that I am sure resonates with parents of the children gunned down at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 24^th. So, too, the loved ones of those shot down the week before in a Buffalo, New York shopping center by a white supremacist. I could add to the list millions of people in this country who have been living hand to mouth for decades and now find that their fragile existence has become even more tenuous due to crushing inflation. These words also resonate with the Israelites recently returned from exile to a land ravaged by war and ruled by foreign powers. Their high expectations for a new beginning seemed dashed by the hard realities of life under Persian domination. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,” they cry out in despair. Isaiah 64:1.  

Our lesson from Isaiah, part of which is quoted above, is God’s response to Israel’s complaint in the prior chapter. In effect, God replies, “I did come down to you! I’ve been here all the time stretching out my hands to you, calling you, pleading with you. The problem is not that I’m not speaking. The problem is that you are not listening!”

Listening involves more than hearing. Listening creates, in the words of poet, Mary Oliver, “a silence in which another voice may speak.” It requires focus, discipline and patience. I find that the most difficult part of listening is putting what I want to say out of mind. I don’t know about you, but I often find that, when discussing what I believe to be important issues, particularly with those with whom I disagree, I lose a lot of what is being said to me because I am already formulating my response to what is said. I have convinced myself that I already understand the tired, ignorant and fallacious arguments my conversation partner is raising and all that remains for me is to defeat them with the superior knowledge and reasoning I already possess. I don’t believe there is anything I have to learn in this discussion. This isn’t about learning. It is about winning. For that reason, much of our dialogue these days is unfruitful. People are seldom persuaded through argument and debate. Minds are seldom, if ever, changed as the result of a single argument, speech or sermon-much less a post or a tweet. In any event, that has never been the case with me. My mind changes more like an aircraft carrier altering its course than a hydroplane making an abrupt turn. Profound changes of opinion come more through having to wrestle with troubling questions raised by people who have listened to me long enough to understand not only my convictions, but also the life experiences that brought me to those convictions. I have been most profoundly changed by people who speak parabolically rather than strictly rationally.  

Arguments operate as frontal assaults upon our beliefs. They evoke a defensive response and so tend to drive us deeper into our entrenched positions. Jesus understood this well. That is why he seldom allowed himself to be drawn into moral and theological arguments. Instead, he used parables. Rather than pounding on the front door and demanding admission, parables sneak in through the back door. They invite us to recognize ourselves in stories that put flesh and blood consequences upon what we claim to believe. They tend to sow seeds of doubt about our entrenched convictions causing us, over time, to question and, perhaps, abandon them.

Many of our modes of communication do not lend themselves to the art of listening. So much of our public discussion takes place these days over social media where we often know nothing about those with whom we are disputing other than what little they can manage to say about significant issues in tweets and Facebook posts. Such disembodied, one dimensional dialogue tends only to deepen divisions, re-enforce stereotypes and inflame passions. Would it make a difference, I wonder, if you knew that the pro-life activist with whom you are debating online was a woman who lost a pregnancy, but never found a way to grieve that loss through ritual, tradition and communal support typically accompanying the loss of a child? Would it make a difference if you knew how it grated on her to hear the terms “miscarriage” and “loss of a fetus”? Would it make a difference if you knew that the pro-choice advocate you encounter in the chat room was the father of a teen with a pregnancy threating her life and health? Would it make a difference if you knew how this family is agonizing over how to deal with this crisis? If we took the time to listen, not merely to each other’s points of view but to our respective stories, would that change the way we speak to and treat one another?

How, then, do we listen to God? Jesus has answered that question for us. In the gospel of Matthew, he tells us that whatever we have done or failed to do for those regarded as “least” among us, we have done to or left undone for God. Maybe we have spent too much time looking for the God who sits at the controls making things happen down here on planet earth. Maybe we have looked too long and hard for the God who will solve all our problems and make everything come out right. In fact, there is no such god and it is therefore not surprising that those seeking it find nothing and meet only silence. The true God is crying out to us from refugee camps around the world, from the depths of prisons, from slums, from war torn cities and towns, from homeless shelters, from within abusive and dysfunctional families. The true God addresses us in all that God has made; through “weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones.” The true God calls out to us from rivers choaked with sludge, deforested wasteland and dying coral reefs. This God is ready to be found. This God’s arms are outstretched. This God is present and longing to be heard. We need only listen.

Here is the poem by Mary Oliver to which I alluded above and which invites us to prayerful listening.

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Source:  Thirst, (c. 2007 by Mary Oliver; pub. by Beacon Press). Mary Oliver was born in 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio. She spent much of her life on Cape Cod and was deeply influenced by poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Her work received early critical attention with the 1983 publication of a collection of poems entitled American Primitive. She is a recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award. You can read more about Mary Oliver and sample some of her other poems at the Poetry Foundation Website.

HOLY TRINITY SUNDAY

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Psalm 8

Romans 5:1-5

John 16:12-15

Prayer of the Day: Almighty Creator and ever-living God: we worship your glory, eternal Three-in-One, and we praise your power, majestic One-in-Three. Keep us steadfast in this faith, defend us in all adversity, and bring us at last into your presence, where you live in endless joy and love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” John 16:12-15.

This Sunday most mainline churches will celebrate the feast of the Holy Trinity, a day on which more heresy will find its way into the pulpit than at any other time of the year. It will all begin with the invocation of God the creator, God the redeemer and God the sanctifier-or some such similar formula. Don’t misunderstand me here. There is nothing wrong with invoking God in these or other words reflecting God’s mighty acts. The problem arises when they get passed off as Trinitarian invocations, which they are not. The terms creator, redeemer and sanctifier (and any other of the many things God does) are not synonyms for Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The former are merely descriptions of what God does. The latter is a testament to who God is.

As Saint Augustine points out, the distinction between the persons of the Trinity exists only within the Godhead. Externally, that is, in God’s dealings with creation and all of its creatures, God is always and only one. Thus, even when the scriptures say that God spoke to Moses or that Jesus raised Lazarus or that the Holy Spirit fell upon the disciples at Pentecost, we are to understand that the Trinity is fully present and acting in perfect concert in every case. Thus, to substitute creator, redeemer and sanctifier with the aforementioned terms renders the Trinity a committee of three, each with its own area of responsibility. That hardly comports with Jesus’ words to the effect that “All that the Father has is mine….” and that the Spirit will “take what is mine and declare it to you.”[1]

So who cares? The church, for one. The Nicene Creed was the product of centuries of rancorous ecclesiastical debate over the nature of the relationship between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The Athanasian Creed, following an exhaustive articulation of Trinitarian faith concludes with this withering declaration: “One cannot be saved without believing this firmly and faithfully.” Though it seems to me that opining about anyone’s ultimate salvation is beyond the pay scale of any mortal, the Creed makes a valid point: it matters what you believe about God. I hardly need to catalogue the atrocities that have been committed on God’s behalf by adherents of numerous faiths, Christianity included. That Christians have taken up the sword to defend the church, to defend the faith, to defend the nations in which they happen to reside and to defend themselves against their neighbors and fellow citizens continues to discredit the church’s public witness. Worse still, it reflects a woeful ignorance (or willful disregard?) of the profound significance of Trinitarian faith.

Jesus leaves his disciples with a “new” commandment: to love even as they have been loved by God. It cannot be overstated that love in this sense is not a human sentiment. It is the glue that holds the Trinity together. The Holy Spirit, says Augustine, is the love binding the Father and the Son. As such, it pre-exists creation and, for this reason, Saint Paul calls it eternal. I Corinthians 13:13. Eternal life, then, is to “know God” and Jesus Christ whom God has sent. John 17:3. Jesus’ disciples are “sent” into the world that God so loved just as was Jesus. John 20:21. The trinitarian love at the heart of the Godhead plays out in human history through the faithful life, obedient death and glorious resurrection of Jesus. In Jesus God is on the receiving end of all the worst humanity can throw. But this God, instead of retaliating, raises up the crucified Son and offers him back to the world-which will undoubtedly crucify him again. God overcomes evil by confronting it with love, love without limit and love without end. We might find it hard to imagine that love alone is any match for AR-15s, tanks and long range missiles. But, as we have seen, love is eternal. That means God has all eternity to work with and God is nothing if not patient. The power of God is the patience of God. Against that patience, evil must finally wear itself out.  

This brings me to my final point, namely, that Christian pacifism is grounded in the Trinitarian understanding of God. There is no hierarchy within the Trinity; no coercion; no conflict. God is complete in God’s self and needs nothing besides God. Yet, as the hymn so eloquently says, “the universe of space and time did not arise by chance, but as the Three, in love and hope, made room within their dance.” “Come Join the Dance of Trinity,” by Richard Leach, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, # 412. Love is, after all, making room for another to be. Of course, when you do that, you take a risk. Couples who make room in their lives for a child experience profound pain when that child rejects their love, makes harmful decisions or suffers injury or death. Yet we continue to have children “in love and hope.” When they hurt us, we forgive them. When they disappoint us, we continue to love them. When they are in danger, we put our own lives on the line to save theirs. We do this because, after all, we are created in God’s image and God is the one who takes the risk of declaring “Let there be.” To take a human life, for any reason, is to insist that someone God has let be should not be. It is as simple as that.

Of course, it bears repeating that pacifism is not the same as passivism. Jesus was hardly passive in the face of oppression, injustice and poverty. His life and ministry consisted of confronting the engines of imperial oppression and its devastating effects on those deemed “the least” in the human family. Yet violence, coercion, threats and manipulation were not arrows in Jesus’ quiver. Neither should they be for Jesus’ disciples. As the Father is one with the Son in love, so should believers be one among themselves. John 17:26. As Jesus was in the world as one who chose death over killing, so should his disciples be in the world. John 17:11.

It is difficult to be a pacifist in these days. It is hard not to respond viscerally when witnessing the brutality of Putin’s Russia against its neighbor, Ukraine. Again and again I have been asked, “So you think the Ukrainians should just lie down and let Russia take their country?” My only response is to say that I have no guidance to give concerning what Ukraine or NATO or Russia should or should not do. But I know that disciples of Jesus, be they Russian, Ukrainian or American, should not take human lives. Jesus refused to allow his disciples to raise the sword in his defense. So if violence in defense of God’s only beloved Son is not justified, how, quite literally in God’s name, can we ever justify it?

Here is a poem by Michael J. Bugeja I have cited previously. It bears repeating as it gives the doctrine of the Trinity its due.

Trinity 

I God

You have distinct dimensions. They are we:
Encyclopedias and alphabets
Of the Big Bang, exobiology,
Inhabitants on multitudes of planets.

Our light cannot escape your gravity.
The soul is linked to yours, a diode
Through which we must return as energy
Until we flare like red suns, and explode:

We try to reconstruct you with an ode
Or explicate your essence line by line.
We canonize commandments like a code
Etched within the DNA. If we’re divine,

Composing simple poems, making rhymes,
Then what are others in this paradigm?

II Son

Then what are others in this paradigm
If not superior? We’re grains of sand.
You have a billion planets to command
With technologies that attained their prime
Before we left the alluvial slime
For land and land for trees and trees for land
Again. These chosen beings went beyond
The boundaries and laws of space and time
To greater meccas. What miracles do
They require? How many stars, their Magi?
Who, their Pilot? When, their Armageddon?
Were we made in God’s image and they too?
Do you save sinners on Alpha Centauri,
All the nebular rosaries of heaven?

III. Spirit

All the nebular roasries of heaven
Are bounded by the lace of your cosmic string.
The unifying force, interwoven
In the clockwork of space-time, is a spring:

One moment we live here and the next, there.
The universe has edges off of which
No one will fall. Because you’re everywhere,
Its seam appears the same from every stitch:

The father sparks the singularity.
We breed like godseed in the firmament.
The Son forgives so that eternity,
Your sole domain, becomes self-evident:

Together you complete the trinity.
You have distinct dimensions: they are we.

Source: Poetry, March 1994 pp. 316-317. Michael J. Bugeja was born in Hackensack, New Jersey and received his B. A. from St. Peter’s College. He earned his M.S. from South Dakota State University and a Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University. He currently teaches magazine writing and ethics at Ohio University at Athens, Ohio. He has published several collections of poetry and was a recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Fiction. He was also named honorary chancellor of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. You can learn more about Michael J. Bugeia at this Amazon link and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

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[1] I am mindful of the concern that terms such as “father” and “son” carry a gender bias some find troubling. Much of this problem stems from our English language in which gender is exclusively linked to sexual identity. Such is not the case for the biblical languages. While I welcome invoking God with feminine images and addressing God with feminine pronouns (or plural for that matter), I am not prepared to dispense with the Trinitarian formula set forth in our creeds, our liturgy and hymnody. That said, I think it is possible to speak of the Trinity in other ways that distinguish the persons of the Godhead while affirming God’s oneness, such as, for example, as “Speaker, Word and Voice.” It is possible to be sensitive without being sloppy and imprecise.